Seagate ships ultra-dense, one-platter 250GB drive

Seagate on Thursday released one of its most efficient hard drives yet. A new 250GB Barracuda 7200.10 variant stores 180 gigabits (22.5GB) per square inch, allowing the drive maker to store all the drive's information on a single platter. The advancement creates one of the fastest and most reliable hard drives yet, according to the company. Without having to switch between different platters to find information, average seek times are faster and the disk consumes less power, cooling it down and reducing the chances that overheating will trigger a failure.

The cost of the individual drive is unavailable, though it should be available through resellers as well as pre-installed for some PCs. Seagate hopes to use the 250GB magnetic disc as the basis for future multi-platter drives, including its one one-terabyte drive. Hitachi has been first to market with 250GB platters in its 1TB Deskstar 7K1000.